GCC Equities Review: Valuation gains made in 2018 but trading volumes remain thin | ZAWYA MENA Edition

GCC Equities Review: Valuation gains made in 2018 but trading volumes remain thin | ZAWYA MENA Edition:

Gulf markets did not escape some of the turmoil experienced across the emerging market equity space last year, but there were specific factors driving investor sentiment within each country, leading to a huge divergence in performance.

For instance, the Qatar Exchange not only posted the best performance in the region, but was one of the best performing stock markets in the world in 2018, outranked only by a recovering market in the Ukraine and by Macedonia.

The Qatar market finished 20.8 percent higher in 2018, substantially outperforming emerging MSCI's Emerging Markets Index (down 16.6 percent in 2018) and the MSCI World Index (down 10.4 percent). Indeed, gains made by markets in Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia led to the MSCI GCC index gaining 12.4 percent in value during the year, bringing the total capitalisation of its markets to just over $1 trillion – the first time GCC combined market caps reached $1 trillion since 2014, according to KAMCO Research data.